Technical Field
The present invention relates to energy efficiency and, more particularly, to energy efficient downlink scheduling in LTE-Advanced networks.
Description of the Related Art
Energy efficiency is becoming an increasingly popular paradigm in wireless networks. The main motivation behind energy efficient resource allocation is to reliably transmit as many bits as possible for every joule of energy spent, thereby ensuring that the explosive growth in wireless services is managed with as low a carbon footprint as possible. Additionally, increased energy efficiency would decrease the overall operating cost for the operators of wireless networks.
Furthermore, each base station in a wireless network does not consume the same quantity of energy and, for each base station, the amount of energy consumed may continuously change. This is particularly true for Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wireless networks. For instance, if the number of users accessing a particular base station or their aggregate traffic demand in a wireless network decreases, the base station need not transmit in the downlink as many bits as it would if the number of users connected to the base station were greater or their aggregate traffic demand were greater. Therefore, to conserve energy, a method for efficient downlink scheduling is needed.